Myth, Memories, and Playful Palimpsest That is, the very act of remembering and re-creating the sacred narratives of the past in secular, aesthetic terms would be an act of emancipation: not in the Enlightenment sense of rational progress, but in a new spirit of ‘ludic imagining’... Firstly, the myth recalls and projects an ‘other’ world. Secondly, the myth reminds us that there is always something else, something ‘other’, to be said or imagined. Thirdly, the myth, as a play of past paradigm and future possibility, gives expression to the ‘other’, to those persons and causes excluded from the present hierarchy.3
For Laurence Coupe, there is clearly a playful aspect to the creation and deployment of the mythological. For Coupe, myth’s playfulness affords a means by which our present reality can be better understood, by throwing up alternate worlds, by offering alternate perspectives, and even by proposing alternate speakers to articulate those viewpoints. Myth, then, can be a radical tool by which the present situation can be recast. At the same time, however, it is worth observing that history is littered with examples wherein myth is both remembered and misremembered in the interests of reinforcing the status quo, of presenting only a single vision of the world, of eradicating alternative opinions and those that dare voice them. Playfulness can disguise—willfully or by accident—as much as it can reveal.
In comic books and graphic novels playfulness is easy to perceive, but it can lead to stereotype and cliché as much it can lead to subversion, including—but not limited to—heteronormativity, monoculturalism, and gender stereotyping. However, as Andy Medhurst has observed in relation to Batman, there is a mutability to the iconography on offer that has at various points supported both reactionary and radical readings of the Bat mythology.4 When the wider culture plays with mythological iconography drawn from comic books—notably Hollywood—such ambiguities persist, affording both positive and negative readings.
In Gaiman’s sequential storytelling, mythological imagery, both old and new, is frequently used in the playful but also radical ways alluded to by Coupe. Gaiman often “borrows” existing archetypes and imagery from classical mythology and repurposes them to his own ends, reinventing other creators’ visions of the classical just as those creators will in their turn have reinvented what has gone before. Additionally, and most obviously with regard to those existing licenses Gaiman has worked on, he takes far newer mythological characters, settings, and plots and turns them to his own ends, again often following in the traditions of other creators, sometimes reinforcing while at other times subverting their intentions. Both processes of attenuation, whereby new meanings are inscribed alongside existing meanings, either to reinforce them or subvert them, can be seen as examples of palimpsest.
As George Bornstein observes, the palimpsestic process was often not a full erasure and led to elements of the original bleeding through, meaning that texts otherwise lost to antiquity could be recovered by contemporary scholars.5 As a result, the term has been widely repurposed in literary and other cultural contexts to describe the process whereby an artwork has been altered but elements of the original version persist, producing a layering effect. Clearly, then, memory is central to the concept of the palimpsest, traces of former iterations “remembered” in the new version.
Writing might be seen as a fundamentally palimpsestic endeavour in a variety of ways. Jorge Luis Borges suggests that he can see palimpsestic “traces” of Cervantes’ previous efforts in the final draft of Don Quixote.6 For Douwe Draaisma, writing in its various forms constitutes a method of recreating the interior space of memory that exists in our heads as actual space: for Draaisma, writing is therefore a metaphor, through which traces of memory are rendered palimpsestically available.7
In his wide-ranging discussion of palimpsest in relation to literature, Gerard Genette highlights the importance of understanding where a writer intends either a “continuation” of the memory being recalled or instead a “transformation” of what has gone before to render it anew.8 As with Coupe in relation to the deployment of the mythological, for Genette the playful is a recurring aspect of the processes involved in certain kinds of palimpsestic remembering and can prove central in determining what is a continuation and what is a transformation. Parody, for instance, is an example of palimpsestic remembering whereby the original text being parodied is played with to produce the desired transformation.9
The result of this palimpsestic endeavor, at least in Gaiman’s case, is storytelling that simultaneously remains consistent with established mythologies while also achieving the progressive outcomes of the playful reimagining alluded to by Coupe. This is not to downplay the multiple meanings inherent in Gaiman’s work, in other words the many meanings that can be attributed to the imagery on offer: indeed, it is rather to suggest that the preferred readings of the author and his collaborators tend towards storytelling that rejects cliché and stereotype in favor of complexity and ambiguity.
Related to this, arguably Gaiman’s position as someone not only capable of working across media forms but as someone capable of excelling at these different kinds of storytelling means that he draws individuals to sequential storytelling who might otherwise be repelled by the perceived shortcomings of the form. These are readers who might otherwise be turned off by the macho men and scantily-clad women, by the lack of nonwhite characters, of gay characters, and differently-abled characters that still dominate mainstream comic books and graphic novels. At the same time, Gaiman asks long-standing fans to re-remember the medium they love, to understand why the mythological archetypes of comics are themselves so pervasive in the wider culture.
Future Shocks Neil Gaiman wrote for the Tharg’s Future Shocks strand of the British comic 2000AD on a number of occasions throughout the 1980s. 2000AD began in 1977 offering a mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror at odds with the prevailing character of other existing comics.10 Its emergence alongside the punk rock movement has frequently been commented upon, both cultural phenomena sharing an anti-establishment ethos. In its early days the comic controversially reimagined the archetypal British hero Dan Dare as a more bullish, subversive figure than its creator Frank Hampton envisaged,11while simultaneously bringing to the page the authoritarian figure of Judge Dredd and the existential future soldier, Rogue Trooper, among many other iconic comic book figures.
Tharg’s Future Shocks replaced Dan Dare for four issues in August 1977 and later became a recurrent feature of the comic. Future Shocks consisted of one-off futuristic or fantastical stories characterized by a twist and constituted a way by which the comic could test new writers. As well as Gaiman, Future Shocks would also offer a platform for newcomers such as Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Simon Spurrier, John Smith, and Peter Milligan.12 Gaiman’s four Future Shocks stories appeared in the period 1986-1987.
The first of these, entitled “You’re Never Alone With a Phone!”, was drawn by John Hicklenton and lettered by Tom Frame. The story begins with the framing device of a school lesson at some unspecified point in the future. The context for this is indicated by the title of the Future Shocks strand and the juxtaposition of the teacher’s unorthodox garb with his otherwise familiar, “teacherly” dialogue. We see the rear of his silhouetted pupils’ heads, one sporting a Mohawk haircut. The teacher is offering a history of communication, beginning with drums and progressing through smoke signals and letters, the latter presented in the form of a “postie” delivering an elderly woman’s mail and commenting on its contents. Here Gaiman palimpsestically deploys mythological archetypes familiar from British cinema, with the benefit that they provide a shorthand way of illustrating exposition to the reader, especially important given the relative brevity of the Future Shocks strip.
In the next panel the teacher moves on to discuss the telephone as a cultural object. Projected on the wall of the classroom are assorted telephones intended to illustrate the development of the device, beneath the caption “OBSOLETE COMMUNICATIONS DEVICES.” This approach chimes with Roland Barthes’ conc
ept of the “enigma,” a point of mystery in the story’s structure designed to hook the audience into the narrative.13 In this case we are confused as to why a device we consider so integral to our lives has been rendered “OBSOLETE” in this future world and desire to know more. The next panel shows two men talking to one another in profile and a third to the rear. The figure on the left is presenting a device called a “vidphone,” the latest invention of The Teleco Corporation’s research department, which his colleague observes is “extraordinary.” In the next panel, however, a harassed man is seen talking to a loved one on his vidphone, promising to pick up a cauliflower on the way home. A further version of the vidphone is seen in the following panel, in which a woman is seen complaining about her caller having eaten garlic, the machine evidently capable of transmitting smell as well audio vision. Again these are archetypes but they are transformed by the context of the futuristic technology in question.
In the following panel, the two senior employees of The Teleco Corporation are seen discussing the enduring problems of telephonic communication: “Wrong numbers! Crossed lines! Wasted time” says one; “Not to mention the basic inconvenience of having to telephone people at all” agrees the other. 14 The second speaker then goes on to reveal his “Intelligence Circuit,” a method by which telephones can communicate with one another without the intervention of a human speaker. In subsequent panels — with the teacher still narrating—we see the effects of the Intelligence Circuit. People are unable to make phone calls because the “phones are always talking to each other,” and the “phones themselves are unable to pay the bills.” Eventually The Teleco Corporation takes the decision to cut off the telephones. In the final panel the twist is revealed: that without telephones this future society has resorted to the drums, smoke signals, and letters that the teacher began his history of communication with.
In addition to other archetypes, “You’re Never Alone With a Phone!” deploys the model of the wise overseer as a means of framing the story. However, Gaiman chooses to remember the archetype specifically as a teacher, and further to reimagine the teacher in a futuristic context. Paul Connerton, echoing Coupe, makes the point that this is one of the roles of the mythical, in which the past is deployed as a means of understanding the present. Connerton refers to the contemporary phenomenon of the “reanimation of prototypes,” whereby mythological archetypes are redeployed in a contemporary context.”15 Since science fiction—and to a lesser extent fantasy —is frequently posited as a means by which the present is understood through the metaphor of the future or a fantastic Other world, this perhaps helps explain why mythological archetypes are so prevalent in each genre.
Further archetypes are evident in Gaiman’s two-page Future Shocks story “Conversation Piece,” illustrated by David Wyatt and lettered by Tom Frame, in which two largely unseen deities regard the planet Earth from afar. Panel by panel we move closer to the planet’s surface. All the while the deities discuss the Earth as though it is a bauble, something created by one of the deities as a pastime. As this character explains, the detail of the planet comes from the “homunculi” at work on the planet’s surface, otherwise known as the human race. Earth’s creator explains that the point of the hobby is to freeze the planet, and that the skill of the pastime derives from knowing when precisely to do this. However, the homunculi succeed in blowing Earth up, which the creator character reveals “always” happens. At the conclusion of the story the other deity requests two planets for his/ her spouse, and we see a pair of hands lifting the planets. In the final panel the creator asks the other being whether he/she would like to collect the planets; the other deity responds that they would prefer to wait, and that they could perhaps have a cup of coffee.
In its deployment of the creator archetype, “Conversation Piece” is clearly recalling archetypes familiar from religion. At the same time, the satirical approach—characteristic of the Future Shocks strand—also echoes the work of Douglas Adams, author of the original radio version of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and associated versions, which Gaiman would become biographer of later in his career.16 Adams’ work is itself littered with re-remembered ideas from science fiction and from other popular genres too.
The six-page Future Shocks story “I’m a Believer” was drawn by Mark Belardinelli and once again lettered by Tom Frame, and appeared in 2000AD issue 536, published August 1987. The story concentrates on the figure of Harry Petersen, an everyman figure who works with computers at some unspecified juncture in the future. In the opening panel we see Harry apparently falling through the air, surrounded by a miasma. The narration in the box on the left of the panel tells us that Harry has just “discovered one of the secrets of the universe,” a sentiment finished in the right-hand box: “Tomorrow there may not be a universe to have secrets in!”17 The Barthesian enigma established, the story continues.
Initially “I’m a Believer” seems to be following a similar trajectory to “You’re Never Alone With a Phone!” in focusing on the shortcomings of a particular piece of technology, in this case a computer that Harry cannot make work, despite his best efforts. However, in the case of “I’m a Believer” Harry’s efforts to make the computer work are merely a method of getting Harry first to question whether computers only work because we believe they do. Once Harry thinks this idea, the world’s computers do indeed stop working, and from here Harry starts to question whether everything in the physical world only works because humanity believes it works. This is the point at which we joined Harry in the first place: apparently falling through the air as the world disintegrates around him, Harry having doubted the reality of gravity.
Only Harry’s collision with his friend’s hover bike causes Harry to literally return to the reality in which belief guarantees things work. The hover bike has been established earlier in the story in a fashion akin to the drums, smoke signals, and letters at the beginning of “You’re Never Alone With a Phone!” and similarly “paid off ” later in the story. We know from its establishment that the hover bike is a somewhat decrepit machine that Harry refuses a lift home on, preferring instead to take “the beam,” presumably some method of public transport. Harry’s friend later admits that the mechanic who looked at his bike can’t understand how the machine moves, since half its engine is missing.
The final of Gaiman’s four Future Shocksstories, entitled “What’s in a Name?” was published by 2000AD in September 1987. It was illustrated by Steve Yeowell and inked by Jack Potter. The story begins with an author going to a doctor for help. The author explains that he writes novels under a variety of pseudonyms: romantic fiction, detective fiction, and science fiction. The novels have previously sold well and the author has enjoyed his anonymity. However, now the characters have been seeping across from one genre of writing to another. The doctor claims to be able to remove the characters from the author’s mind and to “grow” them so that they are free to live their lives and the author is free to live his life. The process is successful; however, the author then begins to experience writer’s block. At the conclusion of the story the doctor muses as to whether to write up his case notes, but worries that none of his colleagues will believe the story. He briefly toys with the idea of writing the case notes under a pseudonym, and then dispenses with it.
As with the Future Shocks story “Conversation Piece,” “What’s in a Name?” utilizes the archetype of the creator. However, in this case the creator is a fallible figure unable to control his creations, who then becomes bereft when his creations are removed from him. To relocate his creativity the novelist is forced into inventing a new pseudonym under which to write, but this only serves to reinforce the idea of the novelist’s dependency upon his creations. Clearly there is a meta-textual level evident here wherein Gaiman is analyzing — albeit in a light-hearted way— his own relationship to the characters he creates, a supposition reinforced by the use of pseudonyms for the three creators of the strip in the credit box at the end. At the same time,
the story recalls the tradition of twist-in-thetale narratives about creations taking on agency of their own, including the classic British horror movie Dead of Night in which a ventriloquist played by Michael Redgrave thinks his dummy has come to life.18 The role of the creator in relationship to his/her creativity is revisited by Gaiman in his Sandman story “24 Hours.”19
In the Future Shocks stories from early in Gaiman’s fiction-writing career, the mythological is most evident in the archetypes employed by Gaiman. These range from the character of the teacher in “You’re Never Alone With a Phone!”, through the deities in “Conversation Piece,” to the Everyman character in “I’m a Believer” and another creator archetype in “What’s in a Name?” As I have suggested, the brevity of the Future Shocks strip perhaps goes some way to accounting for the need to deploy immediately recognizable archetypes. In each case, however, there is a deliberate palimpsestic misremembering whereby the archetype is repurposed for the context of the story in question. Importantly, the archetype must be recognizable, since even though the archetype is being borrowed from the mythological past and situated in the future — at least in the cases of “You’re Never Alone With a Phone!” and “I’m a Believer” —it must simultaneously tell us something about our present condition to carry the necessary impact.
The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman Page 33